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Description

Mapping the Health of Manhattan. An Egbert Viele Map Pre-Dating His Famous Water Map by 6 Years.

Antique map of Manhattan below 80th street showing Egbert Viele's cartographic methodology. The map superimposes Manhattan's original topography and hydrography on the city street grid of the 1850s. The purpose of this approach was to better-engineer the sewers of New York and thereby reduce the chance of epidemics. Viele's theory on the transmission of disease was formed during his firsthand witnessing of an outbreak that devastated a military camp in Laredo, Texas. 

Veile produced the current map only five years after John Snow made his famous map of the Broad Street cholera outbreak in London (1854)

Rumsey (10157) says of the map:

This map is an early version of the larger map that became Viele's 1865 "Topographical Map of the City of New York. Showing Original Water Courses and Made Land" (see our various copies). It only shows lower Manhattan and has less detail than the later expanded map, but it does show Viele's methodology and the beginnings of what would become his great historical drainage map of the city. It was published in a New York State Senate government document and was prepared by Viele to show before the Senate during his testimony on the sanitary conditions of the city.

The map was included in a New York State Senate report: State of New York. No. 49. In Senate, Feb. 3, 1859. Report of the Select Committee appointed to investigate the Health Department of the City of New York.

Condition Description
Some loss at old fold intersections, expertly restored.